WHICH UNION PROTECTS ITS NON-UNIONIZED STAFF THE BEST
We have posted about a half-dozen articles complaining about how fed unions do an absolutely terrible, if not immoral, job protecting staff members not covered by the staff’s collective bargaining unit. (See the list of them below.) These non-unit staffers are the proverbial sitting ducks who can have their income and vital benefits cut off in an instant if an elected union leader is in a bad mood, wants to strut his/her power, needs someone to blame for the leader’s own screw-up, or is just wallowing in paranoia. It is a toss-up as to whether it is more embarrassing that non-unit staffers have fewer rights to challenge a dismissal than the unit employees they supervise have or that the managers in the federal agencies they represent have. So, we thought we would show you a policy statement protecting non-unit union staff and ask if you can identify which union has adopted it—or even whether your own union has.
Should the leadership of the union terminate a non-bargaining unit staff employee against that employee’s wishes without offering that employee the right to return to their previous job in the staff bargaining unit or a week of severance pay for each year of employment with the union, that employee will have the right to challenge the union’s termination decision to final and binding arbitration under the AAA Labor Arbitration rules for a determination of whether there is just cause for the dismissal, and, if not, what relief is appropriate. The employee will have the same right to arbitration if demoted in pay or suspended for more than five (5) days in a 12-month period or given a similar adverse action.
Even if we assume that most terminations of those outside the bargaining unit are legitimate, that still leaves a lot of people unjustly harmed. Most union staffers outside the bargaining unit got there by voluntarily moving up from a bargaining unit position on the staff –and in the process giving up their right to take any significant discipline against them to arbitration. Consequently, union policy should offer them similar protections in return for the employee offering to contribute at a higher level to the union.
So, can you guess which union protects its unit and non-unit staff equally?
Similar articles: “Beware The Black and White Top Union Leaders,” Why All Federal Employee Unions’ Top Leaders Are Hypocrites (5/23/23), Beware The Black And White Top Union Leader (5/30/23), When Union Presidents Send Gifts To Agencies (6/5/23), The Agony Of Termination, Nepo Babies And Paying It Forward (6/22/23), and The Actress Joan Crawford On Progressive Discipline (6/28/23)
